"Don't Smear Industrialists" | Ayn Rand's Screenwriting Advice
"Don't glorify depravity"
“The influence of Communists in Hollywood is due, not to their own power, but to the unthinking carelessness of those who profess to oppose them.”
So began Ayn Rand’s 12-page pamphlet “Screen Guide for Americans,” distributed to Hollywood producers in 1947 to help them keep unintentional communist propaganda off the screen.1
These were the early days of the Red Scare. Rand was working with a group of high-profile conservatives, including Walt Disney, John Wayne, Ronald Reagan and Sam Wood, who in 1944 had banded together to form the imaginatively named “Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals.” The Alliance’s goal was to drive communism out of Hollywood, later supplying friendly witnesses to the House Un-American Activities Committee during its 1947 investigation of Hollywood.
Unsurprisingly, Rand, who cited It’s a Wonderful Life as an example of communist propaganda, had some fairly… robust views on the kinds of messages American movies should and shouldn’t be including. Recommendations included “Don’t glorify depravity,” and, my favourite, “Don’t glorify the common man.”
It’s fair to say that postwar Hollywood would have been less interesting if producers had followed Rand’s advice. She must have been frothing at the mouth as noir-tinged films, with their black-hearted perspective on human desire, ambition, and American institutions, blossomed through the late ‘40s and ‘50s.
That said, there is something to how Rand identifies that movies can be political without being Political. It’s telling that she focuses on the subtle ways that political perspectives slip into supposedly apolitical stories, gradually shifting the Overton window for or against certain ideas. Regardless of what you think of her prescriptions, the underlying point feels strikingly contemporary. As
wrote earlier this year, “politics will invade all films whether one likes it or not.”Below are some highlights from the pamphlet (see here for the full version).
On explicit vs implicit propaganda
“The purpose of the Communists in Hollywood is not the production of political movies openly advocating Communism. Their purpose is to corrupt our moral premises by corrupting non-political movies—by introducing small, casual bits of propaganda into innocent stories—thus making people absorb the basic premises of Collectivism by indirection and implication. Few people would take Communism straight. But a constant stream of hints, lines, touches and suggestions battering the public from the screen will act like the drops of water that split a rock if continued long enough. The rock they are trying to split is Americanism.”
“DON’T SMEAR INDUSTRIALISTS”
“Don’t spit into your own face or, worse, pay miserable little rats to do it. You, as a motion picture producer, are an industrialist. All of us are employees of an industry which gives us a good living. There is an old fable about a pig who filled his belly with acorns, then started digging to undermine the roots of the oak from which the acorns came. Don'’t let’s allow that pig to become our symbol […]
All too often industrialists, bankers, and businessmen are presented on the screen as villains, crooks, chiselers or exploiters. One such picture may be taken as non-political or accidental. A constant stream of such pictures becomes pernicious political propaganda.”
“DON’T SMEAR WEALTH”
“If the villain in your story happens to be rich — don’t permit lines of dialogue suggesting that he is the typical representative of a whole social class, the symbol of all the rich. Keep it clear in your mind and in your script that his villainy is due to his own personal character — not to his wealth or class.”
“DON’T GLORIFY FAILURE”
“Failure, in itself, is not admirable […] It is the Communists’ intention to make men accept misery, depravity and degradation as their natural lot in life. This is done by presenting every kind of failure as sympoathetic, as a sign of goodness and virtue”
“DON’T GLORIFY DEPRAVITY”
“Go easy on stories about murderers, perverts and all the rest of that sordid stuff. If you use such stories, don’t place yourself and the audience on the side of the criminal, don’t create sympathy for him…”
“There is too much horror and depravity in the world at present. If people see nothing but horror and depravity on the screen you will merely add to their despair by driving in the impression that nothing better is possible to men or can be expected of life…”
[Ed: I’m all for depraved movies, but the latter part also feels like the truest part of the pamphet to me. If all we see is negativity, all we can imagine is negativity.]
“DON’T SMEAR AMERICAN POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS”
“Don’t discredit the Congress of the United States by presenting it as an ineffectual body, devoted to mere talk […] Don’t discredit our courts by presenting them as corrupt…”
I learned this from Eddie Muller’s excellent “Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir” (1998). In it, he claims that “studio heads were slavishly reading” Rand’s pamphlet.
"And most importantly, GET RID OF CONFLICT." - Ayn Rand.
Fromtheyardtothearthouse.substack.com
I don't usually agree on ANYTHING with Ayn Rand, but you found an overlap, Ed. Yes, all films are political -- but that is not something to fear or change. It is something to be entertained by! Great post, and thanks for the reminder of how misguided all power can be and why it needs to keep its grubby little paws out of all culture.